A leading U.S. senator announced on a Sunday news program that the Senate intends to approve a budget.

That statement shouldn’t be news. But it is — given the fact that the Senate has not passed a budget in four years.

Sen. Charles Schumer of New York said the Senate will propose a budget that likely will include higher tax revenues that he expects Republicans will not support.

Republicans in Congress are proposing a three-month extension to the federal debt limit vote, which has been described as “Fiscal Cliff 2.” As part of that plan, the GOP also wants to prevent lawmakers from being paid if the House and Senate fail to pass budget resolutions. The actual mechanism for this would only place lawmakers’ pay in escrow and hold it until a budget is passed.

Newly elected Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, agreed with this approach to press for budgets, saying, “There is no doubt the Senate hasn’t done its job.”

Putting pressure on the Senate to pass a budget is reasonable. First, it’s the most basic part of the job of Congress to pass a budget. Both houses of Congress are supposed to pass budget resolutions, then the differences are supposed to be ironed out so that a final budget can be approved.

The second reason the Democratic-controlled Senate should be forced to pass a budget is that it expresses spending priorities and a party’s vision for the future. And that appears to be the reason Senate Democrats have avoided passing a budget resolution — politics.

House Republicans have passed budgets, and some of those budgets, or at least parts of those budgets, have been harshly criticized by Democrats and used as ammunition in political ad campaigns.

Senate Democrats should have likewise been producing budget resolutions. By passing a budget, even without any GOP input or support, Democrats would have made public their priorities. If Senate Democrats wanted to expand spending, that would be clear in a budget resolution. If they thought higher taxes should pay for the additional spending, that would be in their budget. If, instead, they intended to borrow more to pay for increased federal spending, that too would be revealed in a budget resolution.

But just having Senate Democrats produce a budget will not resolve the sharply different priorities between the parties. Democrats continue to resist trimming expenditures for entitlements and prefer increasing taxes to reduce the debt. Republicans generally want to slow the growth in spending while also lowering tax rates.

It is past time for the Senate to pass a budget and present its spending priorities along with Democrats’ proposed solutions to the challenges of growing entitlement spending and debt.

The Senate has not passed a budget since President Barack Obama’s first year in office. Now that he has been sworn in to begin his second term, Senate Democrats should let the American people know their priorities and views on spending and taxes by passing a budget resolution.